DoctorMo's Blog

Last night I went out with my wife to a local political event. Sam Yoon, A candidate for Mayor of Boston was doing a meet and greet near by and I thought it’d be a great opportunity to ask a few questions and give out some Ubuntu CDs. After all, I’m particularly interested in how FOSS appears to our elected representatives and if the principles and working methods in our community can find a home in the more traditional governmental process.

Sam’s main concerns are education in Boston. The local schooling system is under-performing and many people want to see more structural resources going into the system as a whole (both charter and public schools), from this main platform I can appreciate the position Sam was coming from when I pressed him about Free and Open Source Software.

I’ve actually sent a number of letters out to representatives and candidates for various things. I usually send my Understanding FOSS pdf to see if it helps understanding the mechanisms of commons based collaborative work. I’m happy to report that in this one case I think at least to do with schools, he was willing to listen to the arguments and even promote and compare it to collaborative educational course materials (think text books and such).

We shall see if he gets in and if it’s possible to effect change in some of this cities IT misuse.

How have other people got on when contacting their local politicians?